Impressed

I often post blogs after drills, but typically it is all about how frustrated I am to have to go and to have to deal with the unit and the people in it. This weekend we had our yearly Christmas dinner with our family there and Santa paying a visit.

A couple of things really impressed me this weekend. First we had our dinner at the VFW, upon arriving at drills on Friday afternoon I found out that the Reserve unit was using the VFW on Saturday and we were using on Sunday; in a bit of tit for tat the two units made arrangements to have us put up the decorations and have the reservist to do all the pre-cleaning ( we typically clean the place and decorate on Saturday before the dinner). We don't have many decorations, it just seems that over the years bits and peaces have gone missing. I was a bit concerned that maybe the reservist wouldn't clean to well, so I ask if I could have the keys after their dinner on Saturday, thinking I would go and clean up if I needed to. When we arrived at pick up the keys at the appointed time, we found the reservist working together like ants in an ant hill, I was truely impressed at the job they did. As well they had brought in additional decorations which they offered to leave in  place for our dinner. Thanks to Pam with the Ardmore reserve unit who provided the nice decorations and allowed us to enjoy them during our dinner!.

Second there was a soldier who turned up this weekend who has been having some personal struggles. I have said for my entire Guard experience that it sometimes boggles my mind how different the guard is versus active duty. When I was on active duty if a solider found them selves struggling in their personal life, rather it be financially, emotionally or in any other way, active duty army tends to pick up the slack and pretty much carry that solider until they are back on their feet.  Today I watched some of the officers do just that for this girl and her family. With out going into all the details of the girl's life as I wouldn't want my life story told with out my permission, the girl is just struggling with some of the things that life through at you, it's not issues she brought on herself, its just life and how it treats people at times.  I had spoken to her a few minutes before and then turn to go back to her to offer some information that I had suddenly remembered and thought could be useful for her. I found her surrounded by some officers in our unit who where taking names and notes and creating a plan as to how they could rectify a situation that neither she nor them had created. I suddenly was reminded that even in the National Guard, even when at times the guard and unit make you want to scream, when you really need this second family they truly are there for you. It made me proud of my unit and some of the people in the unit.

On another note here are a couple of pics for the day. Katie made best friends with a woman who had an i phone and could play Dora and Deago on it.  Katie and Ayden both had a visit with Santa, later in the afternoon I took a couple more shots of Willow and there is a rare photo of me that I will include as well.